


Fingers on Paper Skin

by Crescence



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Did I mention pining?, First Everything, First Love, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of mentions of wind, M/M, Pining, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, lots of pining, mentions of illness, southwester in particular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7418512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescence/pseuds/Crescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All men have things that they want to keep to themselves. When Steve's decade old secret scatters on the hardwood floor, Bucky finds himself discovering not only Steve's secrets but also facing his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Born from the tip of a wave foaming at the mouth, it licks across the water, before being caught up in the air current. It climbs up the roughness of cement protruding into the sea, presses against the brim of a cap fit too loosely on curly black hair, picking it up and carrying it off a dozen feet before letting it fall on brick fitted roads._

_Steam from a warm cup of coffee in the hands of a man with sleeves pushed up to his elbows mingles in its folds as it twists and turns, rounding the corner on a street. It rushes and blows through limbs, tasting the moisture on folds of clothing hung out to dry, rustling leaves on trees casting acute angled shadows on stone and wood. A gloved hand settles on the pleats of a skirt with a soft gasp of surprise when it ripples the pale blue fabric._

_In a matter of minutes it travels from the oil glazed waters of the docks to the littered streets of Brooklyn. It carries the sounds of dogs barking, of shutters rolling up; the smell of geraniums and summer phloxes from the crates of a florist sprinkling water on his plants. It whispers through alleys, invisible against the rainbow of early sunlight on glass. Then through rusted metal, it pools into a room with a window left open, caresses a lock of golden hair falling over a narrow face with parted lips deep in sleep. Across the doorframe, it knocks over an empty beer can and finds the edges of paper of a sketch book on a coffee table. It plays with it liberally, spreading it open and scattering dozens on pine hardwood, discolored with use._

_Then it whiffles out through a window with frames of splintered wood in the kitchen. As unannounced and quick as is its nature._

_\---_

“Shit.”

Bucky stares at the floor littered with Steve’s drawings as he throws his towel over his shoulder. He knows the guy has them all stacked in some sort of order, probably by date, but he has never seen him put the dates on his sketches. He hasn’t actually seen his sketches all that much apart from a few times Steve wanted him to see a specific one. Like the one of the toothless baker at the corner that keeps trying to overcharge them for a loaf of walnut bread. Or that girl with red ribboned pigtails they had watched feeding the pigeons at the Battery Park. Or the actor dressed in drag rubbing his fingers on the stump of the Wishing Tree in front of the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem. He will occasionally show them his sketches of things they have both seen but he keeps the rest to himself and Bucky doesn’t pry. All men have things they want to keep to themselves.

Now there they are though. He considers waking Steve but knows he needs any extra shut eye he gets after that asthma attack that had him, tough as balls Steve Rogers, near tears last week.

So Bucky sighs and drops the towel on the back of the chair with the one shorter leg he has been meaning to fix for three months. He kneels on the floor carefully, trying not to step on any of the sketches and pulls paper after paper in front of him. After the fourth one, he realizes there is a constant in them. After the ninth he realizes it is himself. Twelfth marks him discarding all pretense in trying not to look. He lifts it up and stares at the work of Steve’s hands. It is him (nearly all of them are him, aren’t they?) dressed in a shirt with the top three buttons undone, slacks rolled up to his calves. His hair is wet and he is smiling and there is excruciating detail in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the glisten on his eyelashes, the light in his eyes. He remembers the moment. It was when Steve had thought the best solution to stop Bucky from complaining about the heat ceaselessly was to drop a balloon full of water on top of his head. It had erupted in a battle of creativity as they had run out of balloons too fast but soon found recreational uses for the latex gloves Steve’s medicine box was stacked with and even condoms from Bucky’s own stash, as Steve had noted, he didn’t have one. The trick was to catch the other unprepared and there was only one rule. Not in the house. This was the moment that had started all that.

A long breath rushes through his lips he hadn’t realized he was holding. He reaches for another sketch, half hidden under the couch and isn’t surprised to see himself again. Dressed sharp and handsome, walking down the street, head down, lighting a cigarette on his lips. From the angle he understands Steve has to have been out on the fire escape, watching him leave for one of his dates. His eyes are narrowed in slits against the low evening sun, light brimming across his slicked hair.

Then he finds one with him asleep on the couch, belly down. An arm under the cushion, the other thrown over, fingers nearly touching the floor. His lips parted, hair falling over his face. Feeling the urge to brush it away, Bucky runs a hand through his own hair and wonders with a jolt if that’s how Steve was feeling as well, drawing him as he slept.

He leans back, resting against the foot of the table and looks at the floor still littered with at least thirty or more pages of Steve’s drawings. There, close to the edge of the counter is one of him reading a newspaper, his temple resting against the heel of his hand, a lit cigarette in his fingers. He looks focused and sullen, jaw set and shoulders tense. It was from when he was trying to find another part time job after the recession had hit and he had realized the one he had wouldn't be enough, even with Steve working his ass off at the post office.

There is one of him dancing, just a few inches away from his foot. Steve has drawn the girl Bucky was dancing with at the Saturday Night Dance as intently as he has drawn him and that puts a sour, acidic feeling in the pit of his stomach. The drawing is beautiful, they look beautiful dancing, her head with the curls of her hair pooling on her shoulders tilted towards his face at just the right angle, smiles mirroring one another, gazes bound. They look solitary, removed from the rest of the world Steve has sketched as silhouettes in the backdrop. It’s like Steve was just an outsider, another silhouette, watching, never belonging in the picture.

 _That’s wrong,_ he wants to say. _I can’t draw for Jack shit but you are in the picture of every memory that ever mattered to me_ , he wants to say to his face. _You are not a silhouette. You are my center._

 _My center_ , he repeats to himself shoulders rounding, head bowing down. Another sketch catches his eye, partially covered under a sketch of two seagulls whirling over the bollards at the docks. He pulls at it, almost apprehensive, and finds himself drawn in the act of reaching out with a look of complete devotion in his eyes. It must be one of those times he reached to ruffle Steve’s hair out of sheer playfulness or grab the back of his neck as means of saying ‘I’m here for you’. His extended hand is only drawn up to his forearm, behind it, his eyes alight with attention, humor, compassion. It’s a portrait, mostly just his face and he can see Steve’s pencil marks smoothed in with the tips of his fingers, rubbed into the paper, casting shadows along the length of his jawline, accenting the touch of light on his forehead, shading the fullness of his lower lip.

He raises a hand to his face, feeling the blood rush. His heart speeds up, beating harshly against his ribs. Some of the sketches are from years ago, with him wearing shorts and sleeveless shirts, grinning widely on a bicycle. There in that one, he can’t be more than fourteen, standing at bat with baseball shorts and fake Adidas shoes. The quality in drawing perfects over time, his later sketches captured with such reality, he can count the pores on skin, convince himself he could feel the texture of fabric.

Steve had been drawing him for almost a decade. Steve had been watching him for a decade. He had been eroding pencil after pencil drawing the contours of his body, running his fingers on the planes of his muscles, studying every detail of every part of him with those piercing blue eyes for a decade as Bucky lived, laughed, worked and struggled unaware around him.

In a split second Bucky’s world comes to a halt. In a single suspended moment, he feels himself being extracted from his individual perspective of every memory and fully understands the reason why Steve doesn’t want to come with him on double dates, why even when he does, he doesn’t really try to make a move on any dame other than being as polite and gentlemanly as he knows how to be, why he avoids looking at Bucky too long in the eyes, why he hasn’t felt comfortable with Bucky seeing his body since they were teenagers. Why, when he was so sick that one time and he couldn’t eat and he couldn’t sleep, when he couldn’t even breathe and he had held Bucky’s hand at three in the morning, and had said to him with a voice barely audible over the rattle in his lungs and with tears in his eyes ‘you are the most important thing to me, Bucky,’ and when Bucky had told him it was the same for him, he had smiled so painfully Bucky had been sure he wasn’t going to make the night, but Steve had said, his voice breaking ‘I wish… I could tell you,’ and he had fallen asleep with exhaustion before Bucky could ask him what he wished he could tell him.

When the stir of the wind finds his hair and the sounds from the street reaches his ears again, Bucky runs his fingers over his eyes, wiping the wetness away. His throat feels tight, on the verge of bursting and there is a part of him so sore from the realization he feels raw down to his bones. A part of him wants to pick all the drawings up, throw them on Steve’s sleeping face and demand an explanation, demand a reason why he wasn’t told, why he was kept in the dark, why he had never shared. Another part wants to slip into his bed like they have occasionally been doing since they were kids, wrap himself around his thin body and hold him tight enough to crush all his delusions, all his insecurities, every single one of his renouncements.

He finishes putting the drawings together, placing them back into Steve’s sketchbook as neatly as he can and leaves his ashtray on it. He walks to the bathroom and washes his face with two handfuls of freezing water. When he lifts his head, his reflection in the mirror looks as shaken as he feels. Brims of his eyes red, hair out of place, pupils dilated. He has got his work in an hour and he looks like he got shit-faced drunk the night before. He decides he doesn’t care.

He goes back to their room and stands at the doorway. Steve’s still asleep on his own bed, curled on his side with a hand under his pillow and the other flung across his stomach. He has kicked the sheets away and is wearing a sleeveless shirt with shorts that are too loose around his narrow hips. He looks frail, small. He looks lonely.

Bucky wonders what he is dreaming about.

He crosses the room in a stride and half and sits on the floor next to him as quietly as he can. He watches his face with the same attention Steve had been watching his for a decade. He is breathing evenly with a soft sigh too low to be called snoring. There are light freckles on his cheeks, a bit over the bridge of his nose that he knows won’t be there in winter. He has never told Steve it is one of the reasons he likes summer. He can’t spew poetry and he can’t draw a straight line in charcoal even if he tried but Bucky loves. He loves the same way people align notes after notes to make music. In full immersion and minute appreciation and there isn’t a thing about Steve he doesn’t love.

He slowly reaches with a hand, fingers feather-light against golden hair, brushing it away from his face. He stares at him for a long time, trying to understand when he became so difficult to read. The same Steve who got in way too many fights cause he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, the same one that couldn’t talk about necking anyone without turning beet red all the way up to his ears, had kept something so grand a secret for such a long time and Bucky had never known.

Then his hypocrisy slams into him with a force that knocks his breath away. He had missed the single most important thing for the entirety of a decade. He had missed Steve’s perspective. How imbued in every one of his sketches and saturating every line on paper, there is Steve’s longing. His loneliness. Because _he_ doesn’t know either.

Bucky leans in, face inches away from his face. “I wish… I had told you,” he whispers. Steve sighs in his sleep, brows furrowing slightly. He keeps sleeping. He keeps dreaming.

He keeps not knowing.  

“I’ll fix it, Stevie.”

\---

_It finds him in work slacks and a buttoned up shirt a few hours later. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead as it cools it on his skin with a saltine gust from the sea. He raises his head to the breeze of its folds and takes a deep breath. When he opens his eyes his eyes are as light as the foam that created it. He looks like he’ll take flight with it, join the rolls of the southwester across the streets of Brooklyn to a tiny apartment tucked in an alleyway where a boy with golden hair and eyes bluer than the august sky looks curiously at an ashtray left on his sketchbook._


	2. Chapter 2

_Silver of the moon drowns in the dirty yellow of numbered street lamps. The wind brushes gentle against the sidewalk, still warm from the day’s blazing heat. It moves in a whirl of quiet towards the openings of life, living spaces where living do their living. Newspapers catch onto its tail, a woman with patched skirts pushing a cart sends a muttered prayer of gratefulness when it wipes the sweat off her forehead._

_Sounds of laughter roll into the flections as it shuffles through a group of men and women, music pooling into the street. It carries of a few notes to a cat two alleys away, who perks its ears in the middle of chasing a rat down a manhole. Night loses a few shades as a stray cloud swallows the moon._

_For a still moment, it loses momentum, tangled in the leaves of a willow oak before the night sighs, breezing through the streets of Brooklyn, leaving wisps and whiffs of it at windows left open._

“Remind me again why you have the better bed?” Bucky asks as he closes his eyes to the wind whirling lethargically through the open window, drying the sweat on his skin.

“So that I can breathe, asshole” Steve says, elbowing him in the rib. “And you have the better bed in winter.”

“And that’s why you should share. Come winter, I give you my precious body heat so that you aren’t cold.”

“As long as you stay on your side of the bed, I don’t mind sharing. I just don’t want you all sticky up my side by morning.”

“You hurt my feelings.”

“Is that why you are smiling?”

“Shh, Steve. I’m relishing.”

His profile is a marvel in the dim light coming through the window. Steve watches him with a habitual intent, eyes skimming down the arch of his eyebrows, across the bridge of his nose, the full curve of his lips, reminiscent of an inverted staircase climbing down to the plains of his jaw, lower to his neck, where his adam’s apple is prominent against the soft orange light. 

“Bucky.”

“Mmm?” he hums, Steve feels the sound vibrate through the nearly bare mattress save for a single thin sheet stretched over it.

His stomach knots, a wave of sweat completely unrelated to the August’s suffocating heat comes over him.

“You saw them, haven’t you?” he asks, glad that he sounds much calmer than he feels, convincingly casual.

Bucky opens his eyes, staring straight up at the ceiling. He doesn’t answer right away but Steve already knows. He knows the moment Bucky opens his eyes.

“Yeah.”

For one stretched moment, there is only two sets of heartbeats Steve’s sure they can both feel through the damn mattress. His mouth goes dry.

“Was it the wind?”

“Yeah.” Bucky gives a small nod. Then his head turns to meet his eyes. Steve’s heart stutters.

“How did you know?”

“I know you wouldn’t go through them.”

Bucky holds his gaze, quiet for nearly an entire minute before he mutters, “I wish I had before.”

Steve swallows the spit he doesn’t have, looks away, down at the mattress between them. Bucky had asked him during dinner what he had done today, like he had done nearly every evening before that and Steve had said that he had sketched a bit, like he too had done so many times before that and Steve had kept his eyes on him, to gauge his reaction, to see a hint on his face that he had seen what he had been sketching all this time. Bucky had nodded, managing a ‘Good’ around a spoonful of bean stew. He had almost fooled him. Almost. Save for the split second glance he had shot across the room, where Steve’s sketchbook sat on the coffee table, Bucky’s ashtray still on it. They had talked about his work, about Steve going back to his own in two days. They had talked about the war in the newspapers. The possibility of it reaching all the way there. They had talked like they had every night before that, except, Bucky held his gaze. All night, as Steve ate, as he brushed off Bucky’s concerns for his health, as he told him about the neighbor across the street that unknowingly dumped his trash down his window onto a copper. Bucky held his gaze, steady and warm and Steve felt increasingly certain that he had seen, that he knew. He knew.

“You don’t need to worry about it”, he manages with a low voice, still unable to meet his eyes.

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks, right away.

“I mean…” and now, Steve meets his gaze, suddenly realizing how small his stupid single bed is, how Bucky is just a head away from him. “I mean nothing has to change. I’ve…” _It isn’t exactly new_ , he wants to say. _I’ve felt this way for years and never wanted you to be anything other than what you are. It isn’t worth risking it_ , he wants to say. _I’m fine as long as you are my friend._

Words get stuck in his throat. “I’ve got it,” he says instead.

Bucky is still staring at him, eyes intrusive but infinitely gentle. Dark for reasons Steve can’t comprehend.

“And is that what you want?” he asks.

Steve stares at him without understanding. _What do you mean if that’s what I want?_

 _What do you mean if that’s what I_ want?

Bucky frowns a little, makes a little jerk with his jaw, “Or let me ask this way, do you think that’s what I want?”

Steve can do nothing but gape at him, heart racing in his chest, his last breath still locked behind his throat. He watches sheepishly as Bucky turns to his side, facing him fully and then he is reaching out with his hand and then its pressing warm against his own and Steve cannot register the feeling until his eyes follow the gesture, until he has visual proof that on this mucky damn August night, Bucky has reached across their single bed and held his hand.

When he looks up again Bucky’s eyes are barely visible with the street lamps casting an orange halo around his head. They are alight in shadow, like sparks on a flint stone and when he speaks, his voice is low, deep, thrown off with something so profound Steve can’t breathe.

“I am not an artist, Steve. I can’t give you a sketchbook full of drawings to show you how I see you…” His thumb brushes against the skin of his wrist.

“But I can tell you. And if you let me,” he moves closer, forehead inches away from pressing against Steve’s. “I can show you.”

 _This is happening. This is actually happening,_ is all Steve can think as he releases an excruciating breath held in too long. Bucky’s face is just a breath away from his, eyes still locked to his own. His hand keeps brushing circles on his skin and Steve with all the wit and rash God has put liberally in him, cannot form a single sentence in reply.

“I-what?” he blurts and Bucky is smiling and then he pulls his hand up in between them, pressing it against his lips. Soft as morning dew in April that gathers on their clothes hung out to dry and warmer than how sunlight feels after a cold winter; bone deep and listless, they linger on his skin for so long Steve thinks that some distant shred of the universe has torn apart and time has stopped. Bucky finds his gaze again.

“The first time I wanted to hold your hand, Mayfield brothers had pushed you into that ditch behind the school. I wanted to help get you out but you kept refusing my hand. You were just nine, stubborn as a mule, prideful like a prince. You wanted to climb out of it on your own. And I could do nothing but watch you try over and over again, feeling my gut wrench every time you slid back down to the bottom. When you finally got out, you had this huge grin on your face. You had a purple eye and your lip was split and there you were, grinning like you had conquered the world. I wanted to hold your hand all the way home. Not cause I thought you needed it. Cause I thought if I did, I thought maybe I could be half as strong as you are.”

Bucky says all this without pause, never breaking his gaze, never letting go of his hand and Steve feels his throat tighten, his heart swelling in his chest in a way he can’t control. He had kept his gaze barren, devoid of all that fills him to the brim, had restrained the impulses of his hands, swallowed confessions blooming on his tongue for so long, something stretches taut in him, on the verge of breaking. He struggles to hold on, fearful of the voice in him that tells him it can’t mean what he thinks it means, that there is no way Bucky could think of him the way Steve did of him for years without his knowing.

Bucky moves Steve hand into his left to free his right hand and then he is cupping the side of his face and his eyes are molded to his, dark, his voice trembling.

“The first time I realized how much I wanted to kiss you was when Sarah Covington told me you had really nice lips. I was dating her then and she said if you were willing to do a bit more with your lips other than mouthing off bullies, you could get any girl you wanted. I didn’t see her again. I told myself it was cause I wasn’t interested in her but it was cause I was jealous. I watched you… “ Bucky leans in, eyes traveling south. Steve’s hand tightens in Bucky’s hold, his heart sore in his chest with a decade-old abuse, he feels like crying.

“I watched your lips for days after that. I drove myself crazy with want.” Bucky whispers against his lips and the feel of his breath is enough to snap the pressure mounting in his gut. Steve surges forward, Bucky presses in and then they are kissing and Steve feels ashamed for the way he can’t slow down, he can’t ease in, he is just naked hunger and a kind of desire so desperate he is tearing up with the release and Bucky kisses back with just as much need, he only lasts for a moment before Steve’s moan seems to unravel him and he cards his fingers through the nape of Steve’s neck and then his tongue is meeting Steve’s and they both gasp at the sensation before Steve pulls him back in with hands in his hair and they are diving, surging and surfacing only for breaths too superficial to feed their lungs and Steve is so dizzy he doesn’t know where the ceiling is, what he is lying on, what he is pressed against. It’s all Bucky.

“The first time,” Bucky pants, lips hovering over Steve’s. “… the first time I knew I loved you was the night you nearly died in my arms.” He runs the tip of his nose against his cheek, eyes closed, lashes wet. Steve brushes his thumbs against his eyes, his heart alight, cupping his face, holding him like he has wanted to hold him for the better part of his life.

“I knew before then,” Bucky continues, staring into his eyes. “I always knew, but that night I accepted it. I knelt by your bed that night and prayed to God to spare you. That I’d do anything, be anything, accept anything if he only spared you. I held you in my arms all night and twice I was sure you had stopped breathing and I kept telling you I loved you, that I couldn’t live if I lost you, that if it was the end of the line, it was for me too.”

“Bucky,” Steve sobs against his lips and holds him tight and they stay still, breathing each other in with foreheads pressed until their past settles in the shadows of their room, until they are calmer, quieter. They reach with anything they can, coiling so that they can’t be undone. Bucky keeps kissing him; tender, drawn-out kisses that somehow feel deeper than the ones before and Steve runs his fingers through his hair, slicked with sweat at the nape of his neck, smooth against his skin. Bucky’s lips part from his and then they are against the side of his neck and Steve gasps, heels of his feet pushing against the mattress. Bucky leaves lengthy, open mouthed kisses on his neck, lips closing around the back of his ear at last and Steve’s fingers dig into his scalp, a tremulous moan climbing in his throat.

Bucky’s breath fans against his ear and he is panting when he speaks.

“I don’t remember.. the first time.. I wanted to touch you. But I know.. I’ve been thinking about you.. every time.. I had my hand down my pants since I was sixteen… Nothing else does it for me.”

Steve curses through gritted teeth and pulls Bucky half on top of him, sliding his hands in his shirt, desperate to feel skin. Bucky lets out a throaty groan at that, lips finding his mouth with fervor again.

“I-,” Steve whispers in between kisses. “.. I can’t believe I can touch you... Bucky…” he frames his face with both hands, staring into his eyes without guard for the first time in a decade. “You are so beautiful.”

Bucky blinks at him with such a vulnerable surprise, Steve claims his lips again, long and hard and then he is pressing against him and Bucky presses back down and they gasp in unison once more, before Bucky’s hand runs down the side of Steve’s body, coming to a stop over his hipbone.

“Please.. let me touch you,” he mutters hoarsely against his lips and Steve’s nails scratch all the way down his back in response and Bucky is cursing and Steve is begging him to do it and there is nothing smooth or hesitant about it before Bucky is palming him in his shorts and Steve arches against him, Bucky’s name on his lips. It doesn't take long until Steve is undone, much shorter than how long they have been kissing but the release is so powerful it nearly knocks the lights out of him and he falls spent on the mattress with Bucky’s face pressed against his chest and he has his arms wrapped around Bucky’s head, swimming in sweat.

Steve listens as the pound of his pulse in his ears recedes and the sounds of the night catches up to him. The whisper of the wind, the screech of cicadas and music slowly register through the languid buzz surging through him. Bucky’s arms are tight around his torso, his ear laid over his heart and Steve runs his fingers through his hair, wondering how the two of them could have felt the same, known the same, withhold the same for a decade through thick and thin and it was just some damn wind that knocked it all to shambles around them. He wonders how many times they had come an inch away from this before, how many times by sheer luck or intention they have avoided it and doesn’t dare wonder for the ache in his heart, what would have happened if Bucky hadn’t seen his sketches.

“I love you, Buck.” Steve whispers, and it’s dark so Bucky shouldn’t be able to see his tears but when he raises his head and gazes at him, Steve isn’t ashamed, he doesn’t hide, doesn’t pretend. Bucky moves to kiss his tears and then the salt from his eyes is on his lips, on his tongue and Bucky holds him tight, settling around him with Steve’s back to his chest.

“Don’t regret that it happened now and not before,” he tells him and Steve curls against him and Bucky kisses his hair, a hand cupping his face. “Remember that Future Fair we went to last year? That Russian scientist with crazy white hair, talking about universes in universes?”

“Yeah?”  

“He said we might have lived a million lives. That we were living hundreds of other lives at once. If that’s true, and if you know that I love you in just one of them, you’d know it in all of them cause in our souls we are the same people. No matter the universe Stevie, no matter who you are and no matter who I am, where we are and if the wind ever scatters all your sketches across the floor or not, there isn’t a life that I don’t love you.”

“I thought you weren’t an artist.”

“I am not.”

“Well,” Steve turns to him, lips grazing. “There is no way I could draw what you just said.” They kiss, soft, long, deep. “But maybe I could show you too.”

_It finds them in the pale of dawn, tangled in each other. It runs cool across arms flung over chests, raising goosebumps on legs entwined, and as it breezes through the living spaces where the living do their living, they move closer in their sleep, attuned even when unconscious. The sketchbook lies on the coffee table where it was last, but it won’t move with it tugging, an ashtray holding it secure against the wind._

_It pours back into the grey of daybreak, blowing through the silence of empty streets and stillness of suspended summer mornings._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> I hope the winds find you in the best of moments as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, seems I can't stop now.  
> Alright this one just... crashed down on me on my way to work this mornin'. I blame the southwester wind.  
> The things that matter are sometimes the things we least pay attention to.  
> So... here it is. I am sorry if it's _strange_. Still easing into my old spaces. I've missed writing so much.  
>  I hope this helps with some of the pain these two inflict upon us.  
> Next chapter will have more dialogue. More honesty. ~~Less wind.~~


End file.
